Alt/Funk/R&B/Rock crew Fitz and the Tantrums is one of hottest buzz bands in the land right now. The group’s debut record from last year, Pickin’ Up the Pieces, reached No. 1 on the Billboard Heatseeker chart and its song “Money Grabber” became an activist anthem for the Occupy Wall Street movement across America.

CityBeat spoke with frontman Michael Fitzpatrick recently, in advance of the band's show this weekend at the Super Bowl Village in Indy. Fitz and the Tantrums performs tonight at 7 p.m. The show is free. (Click here for details.)

Las Vegas-based Rock band Adelitas Way has skyrocketed through the ranks and charts in the last year. The group's second studio release, Home School Valedictorian, hit music shelves earlier this summer and the first single “Sick” reached No. 1 on the Active Rock charts in the U.S. The band is currently on the Carnival of Madness Tour, which hits Dayton's X-Fest this Sunday at the Montgomery County Fairgrounds.

It was sometime back in September that I
stumbled upon the story of Chvrches’ Lauren Mayberry, and her piece in The
Guardianabout the unfortunate realities she faced as a female musician. Only days
later, I heard the stories of classical composers wearing their own diadems of
misogyny. All these forces were crumbling away at what I once believed to be
the most progressive industry we had at our hands.

With such revelations came a personal desire
for truth at a closer proximity. I honed in my lens and turned it on the state
of our own music scene, and the circumstances of female musicians in the Queen
City.

I may have stumbled a bit the first time I saw Molly Sullivan perform. It could
have been the champagne. It could have been the wine. It could have been the
sheer, uprooting shock of such a sneakily sultry voice filling all the quiet
corners of a room.

It was 2011 and the setting was a birthday party at the neo-historic Marburg Hotel,
and local heroes Shadowraptr had just finished their set in the basement — a
lush and operatic performance of their usual brand of psychedelic Prog-Rock,
with Jazz sensibility. They didn’t disappoint with an expectedly raucous
presentation, and we didn’t back down as an ever energetic crowd. It was in a quiet
aftermath, among friends and fellows just as imbibed as our beer-soaked shirts,
that I wove my way through a hallway maze and sauntered into a living room with
an organ against its back wall. At its helm sat Molly Sullivan.

As she would come to tell me nearly three years later, “Going back to when I
first started playing out as a singer songwriter, I always felt this extreme
pressure and insecurity of being a female musician…whose music was tending to
be more on the delicate side of things, an emotionally driven side of things.
It required a little stillness from the crowd.”

But back looking back on that night in March 2011, stillness was inevitable.
Warm from wine and an approaching spring, the handful of us that sat in the
living room did so with an active passivity. But even as heads lolled against neighbors’
shoulders or against the walls at our backs, there was an intensity in every
pair of eyes that I glanced into; all were watching, focused, as Molly struck a
chord and then another, taking us through the coziest part of the evening with
two or three ballads of life, lovelorn.

It was an intimacy that couldn’t have escaped those of us even if it had tried,
and only a brief, drunken sampling of where Sullivan had started her story,
rising to the ranks of the recognized, respected and regaled. Before that, she
was front woman for the electronically infused No No Knots and a few months
after that, she would play out as a solo artist with a backing band, making a
stop at The Heights Music Festival and a New Year’s Eve show at the Southgate
House Revival in 2012, before a brief hiatus kept her choruses hushed.

Sullivan admits that a lot of the anxious cogs of her earlier years were
weighed on heavily by being a female musician in a primarily male-dominated
scene.

“I feel like it’s a lot
easier for men as artists,” Sullivan Says, “generally, because you have the
potential to be the heartthrob, and also it’s not necessarily a sissying thing
to go to for a guy. So I feel like there’s more of an audience inherently built
in.”

In the later months of 2013, however, she re-emerged, armed with a
loop-accentuated sound and a solo confidence that she speaks fondly of. Crafting
songs, sonically clad with vocal layering and solid to the string guitar work,
Sullivan took her one-woman symphony on the Cincinnati circuit, to high acclaim
— winning the solo artist bracket of FB’s local “Last Band Standing 2013”
battle of the bands, and earning herself a spot on one of the participating
MidPoint Music Festival stages.

Sullivan had dedicated time to playing earlier shows in spots she would
normally not perform, in venues and around crowds she would normally not
consider being her primary audience. She says she found new courage in taking
these risks. Though initially unsure about even participating in the event at
FB’s, Sullivan came to find her hesitation was unnecessary.

“I made some assumption about
the clientele there – it’s kind of known to be like a bro bar,” Sullivan
explains. “I was thinking, ‘They’re not gonna get my art.’ That ended up not
being true.”

When asked about the
progression of her performance presentation, Sullivan says, “I think I’ve
actually come to learn — just by doing it when I’m in a bar and everybody is
silent — just like recognizing that there’s something captivating about the
simplicity and the emotion of being present with your songs. It’s a really
empowering thing when people are dedicated to listening and joining you in that
experience.”

Sullivan also recognized the power of community, and the part that earnest
encouragement from within the Cincinnati scene played in her career as a
musician. One pillar in her support group is claimed by The Daughters of The
Midwest, an ensemble stage set of premier, female musicians dominating the
Cincinnati area.

“I’ve definitely kind of
geared my energy towards being supportive of other female musicians,” Sullivan
says, “supporting Kelly (Fine), Mia (Carruthers), Maya (Banatwala). And now
that I’m back out there again, because of the support that I’ve been shown.”

“I think it’s a really powerful thing to have a female musician community to
support each other,” she continues. “And as soon as I got back into it, it made
it a lot easier to go with the flow and be excited for people wholeheartedly.”

And looking outside of the just the female musician community, Sullivan
vehemently recognizes the support of Cincinnati as a whole. Sullivan expresses
an appreciation for her time playing with The No No Knots, as well as the
support she received from the members of Cincinnati’s Marburg Collective. As
she explains, "There’s mostly positive reinforcement floating around. There’s
kind of this really solid to the earth community here that exists that wants to
support."

She admits that what hides
outside of Cincinnati is what scares her most. We traded stories and
conversations about recent revelations of ignorance and misogynistic skeletons
in some of contemporary music’s most renowned scenes, tales of classical
composers saying woman have no place in conducting pieces.

Sullivan acknowledges being
weary of “the whole, big wide world,” with such possibilities floating around
in clouds of reality.

“Cincinnati scares me in its
own ways,” she says. “Almost what scares me more is beyond what’s Cincinnati,
just the competitiveness that can be fruitful if you’re successful in the game.
And I think part of me has been afraid of success, because with that success,
you know what’s gonna come: it’s gonna be that banter online, all those
anonymous people hemorrhaging bullshit…Why bother?”

Even with such uncertainty for outside markets, Sullivan exhibits an insight
and strength that propels her forward, even more so because of her
acknowledgements of the bad that can come with the good. She says she’s
learning to navigate her way around “the hemorrhaging bullshit.” Her awareness
of everything that can dampen an otherwise well lit stage is what makes her
voice so definitive on the conversation about the regressive mentality of
misogyny that can still exist in our present day music-scape.

There exists within Molly
Sullivan a partnership between community appreciation and individualistic
impetus. She acknowledges the power of community backing, saying it’s a “powerful
thing to have a female musician community to support each other.” And she recognizes
the groundwork that’s been laid out in years past.

“We’ve seen the rise of a few
female fronted bands come through,” Sullivan says, “and people are more willing
to be excited for that and support it.” (She cites the Seedy Seeds and Wussy as
pioneers for female musicianship.) Sullivan is aware of where we’ve been and
where we are. But what’s more, she’s ready to take us to where we need to be.
And she’s ready to do that with a self-made spirit.

“I’m getting to a point where I don’t give a fuck really,” Sullivan says.

It was with a new impetus
that she’s approached her musicianship. “I’ve grown stronger as a female
musician,” she says. “Now I’m just kind of like, well, if you don’t want to
listen to it then fuck you, you don’t have to be here. It took me a long time
to get to that point, and I still kind of have some insecurity about it. But
most of the time I’m just like, ‘Molly, grow a pair, get over it.’ ”

Sullivan also explains the intentionality behind her current solo-set
performances. Much in the same vein of playing in new venues, under possibly
uncomfortable lights, she exhibits a drive to explore her boundaries, and
expand past her limitations.

“I’ve chosen to do these
things by myself,” she says. “If I’m going to play with a band later, I need to
be OK playing solo first. It’s been really empowering, doing all of that.”She proves herself to be relentless and,
though hurt, unscarred by the outside forces of misinterpretation and
misogynistic pressures.

It’s with a knowing, weathered paddle that she navigates these future streams. And
it seems she couldn’t be more pleased with the direction she’s headed.

“So far, it’s been really
lovely being back.” She takes a moment, at the end of our conversation, to
reflect out loud. “Would you look at that? I did that. And I don’t need anybody
else. I’m all about collaboration, but it’s really good to know that I don’t
need anybody. I’m capable.”

A
lot of great things emerge from Cincinnati: goetta, Graeter's Ice Cream, George
Clooney… Among those locally bred gems is WHY?, the eclectic indie Hip Hop band
with some of the most brilliantly complex and candid lyricism out there,
courtesy of Jonathan “Yoni” Wolf. In addition to its lyrical genius, WHY? is
never lacking in instrumental flair, boasting infectious beats, tinkering
bells, moving strings and woodwinds — the works. Band members Yoni Wolf, Josiah
Wolf, Doug McDiarmid and Liz Wolf toured all around the country and world this
year. They’ve traveled to San Francisco, Montreal and London, to name a few,
but now find themselves back in their hometown.

CityBeat met with drummer and instrumentalist Josiah Wolf (Yoni’s brother) at The Comet
and spoke to him about Cincinnati, his new projects, upcoming shows and WHY?’s
latest albums.

CityBeat: Cincinnati is your hometown. You and Yoni grew up here?

Josiah Wolf: I was born in
Philadelphia but came here when I was, like, two. So yeah, I grew up here. I
lived here all of my formative years…left when I was around 21.

CB:I saw that WHY? is
nominated for the “Indie/Alternative” category for the Jan. 2617th annual Cincinnati Entertainment Awards (CEAs). How does it feel to be
nominated?

JW:I don’t ever expect to win those things, but it’s nice that we’re
on the radar of the city. We were nominated last year too and went down to The
Madison. I think [the CEAs] have gotten bigger. It’s cool — it’s kind of a way of
getting the music community and art community together.

CB:Do you interact with
some of the local bands here?

JW: Uh, never, no. [Laughs] Just kidding. Yeah, I’ve met some good friends here and some good
bands here. I’ve met a lot of people through WHY?’s other drummer Ben Sloan — a
lot of his friends that he went to school with. They have a collective, The
Marburg Collective, and they play at The Comet every Monday.

CB: Aside from WHY?,I know you’ve been working on some
other projects, such as Dream Tiger with your wife, Liz. Can you tell me about
that?

JW: I’m doing stuff for
myself right now that is only in infancy. Some of that might be music I release
myself or I might collaborate with Liz on it. Some of it might become WHY?
songs. I have a lot of tracks that are in their beginning stages.

CB: So with WHY?,do the members work on music
individually and then come together?

JW: Yeah, we do that a
lot of the time. Every record is different, though. Like with the last record, Mumps, Etc., Yoni worked on almost all
of that by himself. With the Golden
Ticket EP, I did all of the music on that. Yoni wrote the songs on the
piano and then he sent me the tracks and I put music around it.

CB: How is it different
to do your own stuff versus stuff for WHY? or Dream Tiger?

JW: WHY? is kind of
Yoni’s band in a way even though we’ve had times of collaboration. It’s my band
also but he’s the main guy. Dream Tiger is Liz’s band. [Laughs] In both bands,
I kind of take a side role. The difference is working with my brother versus
working with my wife. They’re different but both are good in my life. Lately, I
enjoy working by myself in a way, as far as coming up with ideas.

CB:You’ll be playing at The Comet on New Years Eve with WHY? for your
last show of the year. How do you feel about that?

CB: Which of your
albums is the band’s favorite to perform? I know at the Fountain Square show
this summer, you guys played a lot from Alopecia,
which is one of my favorite albums. How do you choose which albums to play?

JW: Right now we’re
focusing on the new record, Mumps, Etc. We
do most songs from that but, yeah, we do a lot from Alopecia. Some Elephant
Eyelash. We don’t really do much Eskimo
Snow right now. The Alopecia
songs do lend themselves to the live performances better than some of the other
ones — they are more exciting songs in a way. For some reason, the Eskimo Snow songs are a little more
difficult to pull off live [but] we do a couple.

CB: So Mumps, Etc. came out last year after a
three-year break. How would you say the band’s sound has evolved in that latest
album? And since then?

JW: That record was
mostly Yoni as far as the arrangements go. He didn’t play a lot on it but the
rest of us got the parts he arranged and learned them and embellished them a
bit. The goal was to get a very clean, large sounding record with minimal instrumentation — not
too cluttered. I think we did pretty good with that. When I listen back to the
instrumentals, it’s clean, and that’s what we were going for. Nowadays, the
newer stuff that we’re working towards is a little more homemade — a little more
experimental. We’re trying to get back to some of that stuff and get away from
being in a big studio. Next up, we’re going to record more at my house in my
basement studio.

CB: And then there’s
the September EP Golden Tickets from
this year on the Joyful Noise label. It is a described as “a collection of
personalized ‘theme songs’ for and about seven specific WHY? fans who were
Internet stalked.” Can you tell me a little bit more about that project?

JW: It first came about
through our web store three years ago, I believe, right around this time. We
had this one t-shirt that was a misprint. All of the other shirts had a certain
color but one shirt was gold. It was like a test print. Somehow we came up with
this idea: How about we put up a contest online and say whoever gets the golden
shirt will have a song written about them. And the first guy who bought the
shirt — it was Hunter Van Brocklin, the guy — was sent the shirt and we wrote a
song about him. That’s how it started. From there, we did another merch contest
and then we kind of got away from the merch contests and did more of a charity
after the Japan [tsunami]. We did an auction where whoever gave the most to the
benefit got the song written about them that month — that was the golden ticket.
So every month, it became a little different.

CB: When the fans found
out about their “theme songs,” how did they react? Creeped out? Flattered?
Shocked?

JW: Everybody liked it!
At least nobody expressed a [creeped out] sentiment. Maybe some people were
creeped out [Laughs], but people seemed to like it a lot. People wrote us about
it. We were lucky; all of the people we selected were really cool people. If
you’re going to put your information out there on social media, we can write a
song about it. It’s all public information. We had a good time doing it. Yoni
would send me the tracks and I would make the music around it. It was just a
fun little project.

Another music fest on the banks of the Ohio River, Forecastle, celebrated a killer weekend

I started out the second day of the Forecastle festival in Louisville by getting caught in the rain and being picked up like a hitchhiker by the Everest band van on the way to setup for their set on the main Mast Stage of the festival. The band agreed to let me hang for “A Day in the Life” photo series as they prepped to play the 10th Anniversary of Forecastle. They were laid back as the rain moved in and gear was unplugged and wrapped in saran wrap.

Everest has been on the road promoting their third album Ownerless. On Ownerless, you can hear a refined sound in which the band speaks about powerful issues as they took their time to record and find their true voice, writing from the heart and soul. The band consists of members Russell Pollard (vocals/guitar/drums), Joel Graves (guitar/keys/vocals), Jason Soda (guitar/keys/vocals), Eli Thomson (bass/vocals) and new addition Kyle Crane (drums).Everest are rising stars in the alternative music scene and have toured with My Morning Jacket and they will be heading back on the road with Neil Young this fall.

It turned out to not be such a typical “day in the life” as the show was held back because of lightning in the area but the band unloaded and prepared to play even as heavy rain descended on the festival. The festival opened an hour late due to rain delays but they did make time for all the planned acts to perform (albeit with shorter set lists).

Everest played loud and rocked the crowd as it gathered to hear this band singing my favorite track on the new album as the opening song “Rapture.” Founding member Pollard’s raspy vocals were captivating and I instantly became a fan of this band as they sang older tunes and new record songs like “Into the Grey.” The Watson Twins joined the band for a few songs on backing vocals to round out their set.

Overall it was a great day to play music in Louisville as fans gathered to celebrate 10 years of the fest, which self-defines itself as being all about "music, art and activism." The Preservation Hall Jazz Band took the main stage by storm and had fans dancing in the grass; special guests onstage including Jim James and Andrew Bird playing classic tunes with the legendary jazz musicians from New Orleans. James' band (and hometown heroes) My Morning Jacket played over two hours to close out the night while Girl Talk played on the second stage and had a festival rave in full action on the banks of the Ohio river.

’90s hitmakers perform tonight at Dayton club McGuffy's

It does not seem like it has been 15 years since Fastball released its biggest hit, “The Way.” But the trio's Classic Rock- and Pop-inspired Alt Rock sound transcended the ’90s and is already considered a classic. The band has just gotten off the Under the Sun tour with fellow ’90s rockers Gin Blossoms and quickly began its own headlining tour, which hits Dayton, Ohio, club McGuffy's tonight. The Easthills and 650 North open the show. Click here for details.

CityBeat caught up with singer/guitarist Miles Zuniga in advance of Fastball's Dayton appearance and discussed tour life and the changes in their musical hometown of Austin, Texas.

CityBeat: What was the highlight of the Under the Sun tour?

Miles Zuniga: There were a lot of highlights. I got to play bass in the Gin Blossoms, as well as playing with Fastball. That was a perk. Just being around those great musicians and stuff. It was probably playing at Humphreys by the Bay in San Diego. It is an amazing venue. It is right by the ocean and you get a real good view on stage that is pretty great. There was also a sailboat that some guy owned down in Charlotte and he named it “The Way.” Actually, it was a yacht, an 85-foot yacht, and I got to go on his yacht. That was pretty nice.

CB: How has the process changed over the years for you guys to put together songs?

MZ: Probably the biggest way it has changed, when we started, it was a lot harder to flesh out something on your own because I had a little 4-Track (recording device). I didn’t have a jump drive or anything. You couldn’t really imagine how the whole piece of music would look. These days, with computers, it is pretty easy. You could do something that could potentially even end up as a recording if you wanted. That is what has changed the most for me. I can construct songs and get them in the ballpark of what I hear in my head. To me that is really good. It eliminates a lot of the misunderstanding. Sometimes it is good to have an open slate and hear what a song is going to do with no preconceptions.

CB: The band is from Austin. Austin has become this major music scene. How has Austin changed since the ’90s when you started out?

MZ: It has grown exponentially. It is kind of a drag for people like me because I felt like I used to have it all to myself. It wasn’t as crowded. It is kind of turning into into a big city and all that entails. The restaurant scene is more exciting, but at the same time, traffic sucks. I don’t know where live music fits into the whole bit. I think the live music scene is roughly the same amount of people playing live music. I don’t think the live music scene has grown in terms of how many people are doing it with the population. I think it has remained the same. I don’t know. To be fair, I don’t go out as much as I used to and see bands.

CB: You have used Kickstarter, which is becoming very popular as well, to raise funds for your musical projects. Can you talk a little bit about that process and why you think it has become so popular for people to do use this as a tool for fundraising?

MZ: It has become invaluable. It is very hard to make money off recording these days with the advent of Pandora and Spotify. People are used to getting music for free or next to nothing. So it is very different from when we had hit songs and people had to go to the record store to buy the record.

The problem is, the cost of making a record hasn’t come down accordingly. It has come down, but it still costs. If you are going to do a record with artwork and everything, it is going to cost you anywhere from 15 grand to 30 grand, maybe more. It just depends. Everything costs money. It is invaluable with a thing like Kickstarter, finding the fans willing to commit to the project before they have heard the music. That is pretty radical. That means they are real fans. They love what you do and trust that you are going to deliver something they are going to enjoy.

CB: When you have written songs in the past, did you know when you were writing them that you had a hit?

MZ: No. We had no idea. “The Way” was our biggest song. We had no idea that song was going to do what it did. It was one of the more contentious numbers, in terms of how we wanted it to go. Tony (Scalzo) and I were at each other’s heads about how it should sound. I think all that creative friction really ended up producing a classic. We didn’t know it at the time, in the moment. None of us thought it was going to be a gigantic song. In fact, it takes a full minute before the vocal comes in. I never would have thought that had commercial potential, to wait that long before (the singing starts). It turns out DJs love that kind of thing because they can talk over it.

“Out of my Head,” when I first heard Tony play that I thought, "This is great" and "This is a hit," and I was right, but everybody kind of thought that song was a hit. It was not anywhere as big of a hit as ‘The Way” though, and that is interesting.

CB: I love them. I love Foxygen. I am a music photographer and you can’t beat shooting them.

MZ: I would note, too, as far as new music, I don’t usually do this but I decided I would listen to the Top 5 songs or Top 10 songs according to Billboard, just to hear what people love, because I never listen to radio or anything. I ended up liking what I heard and it has been the same top two songs all summer, the Daft Punk song ("Get Lucky") and the “Blurred Lines” song. The more I learned about the “Blurred Lines” song, the less I liked it. In the beginning, I liked it a lot in terms of just listening to it and hearing it for the first time. What a great summertime jam and smash hit.

CB: Are there any habits you’d like to break?

MZ: I am actually in the process of breaking them right now. I just got off this tour and I was drinking a lot on it. I decided that was it. That was the last hurrah. I’m not going to drink like that anymore, ever. It is just not fun. It is like an old piece of gum. I have done it enough. I am trying to exercise more than I already do. I am trying to get up early. Boring stuff. It is not exciting stuff, but I guess breaking bad habits isn’t exciting.

CB: Being healthy?

MZ: Being healthy and just being more present, not being worried about tomorrow or yesterday, but being more into what is going on right at this second. I think if you can learn how to do that, it is an amazing thing. Life definitely improves because there is something really fantastic being in the moment. It is hard to do. People are distracted. I am distracted with all the little modern conveniences with the internet and all that crap. I think it is really a detrimental thing, but it is hard to resist too — you know, instant gratification.

CB: What adjectives do you hope people describe you at 75?

MZ: Generous … charming … handsome … hilarious … a raconteur.

CB: What does your ideal day look like?

MZ: Get up around 9 in the morning, have a beautiful cup of coffee, go run or swim, have lunch and then do some creative work for three or four hours, then go have dinner with a beautiful woman and then maybe go see a movie or something. That would be a pretty damn good day.

CB: What has been your greatest Rock star moment?

MZ: I don’t think I can narrow it down to one single moment. There have been so many great memories. One night I got to hang out at a bar with David Lee Roth and Dennis Rodman. We played a really great show, an amazing show in Helsinki, Finland — having a No. 1 record, being so far from home and to have these people freaking out about the music you wrote in your bedroom is pretty amazing.

Anthrax are innovators of the sound of today’s Hard Rock and Metal landscape. The band recently released its 10th studio album, Worship Music, a return to the band’s early sound thanks to the re-emergence of lead vocalist Joey Belladonna. CityBeat caught up with Belladonna and guitarist Rob Caggiano before their show earlier this week in Louisville at Expo 5 to talk about the direction of the band and what got them to where they are today. Anthrax performs in Cincinnati this Saturday at Bogart's.

CSO's new music director talks collaboration with nine-year-old MusicNOW fest

Louis Langrée is well aware of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra's rich history. The CSO's freshly minted music director also knows part of that history includes the nurturing of contemporary composers and their often unconventional works.

Enter MusicNOW, Bryce Dessner's 9-year-old festival of adventurous sounds. (Read our conversation with Dessner here.) This year's sonic extravaganza includes the CSO's take on new pieces by such esteemed composers as Nico Muhly and David Lang, as well as the title work from Dessner's new Classical album, St. Carolyn by the Sea.

CityBeat recently connected with the genial Langrée — who spoke in self-described "primitive" English by phone from Paris — to discuss the CSO's collaboration with MusicNOW.

CityBeat:Before we get into MusicNOW, I'm curious about your initial impressions of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Why were you interested in coming on as music director?

Louis Langrée: The fame the orchestra is really big. Everybody knows it's a major orchestra. But then making music with them was a completely different experience because, yes, they have the qualities of all major American orchestras — precision, clarity of the attack of the situation. But they have also from their heritage, in their DNA, this German conception of sound, that you build the sound from the base of the harmony. That means the density of the sound is something absolutely remarkable, and that's rare in the United States. I think it has to do with the tradition, the roots, of this orchestra and also, of course, about the quality and the spirit of the musicians, which is really wonderful.

CB: Why were you interested in collaborating with MusicNOW and taking on a festival of contemporary music?

LL: One of the strengths of the orchestra is to have supported and commissioned and performed contemporary music from their very early age. Having given the American premiere Mahler Third, Mahler Fifth, Stravinsky coming to Cincinnati before he was considered a giant, having premiered (Aaron Copland's ) "Lincoln Portrait," having commissioned (Copland's) "Fanfare for a Common Man" and many other pieces and many more recent pieces. That's why I wanted to open my tenure as music director with eighth blackbird and Jennifer Higdon concerto piece. It shows that we should support, play, commission and perform contemporary music — and, of course, contemporary American music.

CB:What was it like collaborating with Bryce?

LL: Meeting Bryce was a wonderful. His French is perfect. Especially compared to my primitive English. (Laughs). I like his attitude in making music and experimentation. And any strong institution should be also a place of experimentation. Music is not something you put in a museum. It's alive. And then we should perform contemporary music like Classical music and perform Beethoven music, not forgetting that he only composed contemporary music. All the composers — Mozart, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Bartok — composed contemporary music, so we have to continue it. He's very focused and concentrated, but on the other hand the spectrum was quite bright. I think we have arrived on wonderful programs — very challenging, but very exciting.

CB:What makes him unique as a composer?

LL: He knows how to make an orchestra sound. It's a very clear and precise writing but at the same time there is so much flexibility in the variations of colors written and the flow of the music. It's always quite exciting to study a piece and hear it. Having the privilege of working with the composer is something wonderful because there are so many questions I would like to ask of Beethoven and Tchaikovsky, and of course it's impossible. So being able to ask the composer and to hear his answers is just wonderful.

Bryce is someone who has great harmonic taste, and I think for the orchestra it's wonderful because you can express yourself much easier. I think he's very much like his music — a very welcoming man, a very open, very luminous person. I see that in his music, which is not always the case with composers. With him, I get the feeling he's one with his music.

CB:How has the orchestra responded to playing these new, sometimes challenging pieces?

LL: Any new piece you don't know what to expect. What I've found is that these musicians are very open-minded, they are very generous and positive in their attitude and are eager to try any new experience. It's a privilege to perform these two concerts of new music, but it's also very challenging, so you have to be very practical.

CB:And what's the experience been like for you?

LL: It's a great responsibility when you conduct a piece, but it's also a great privilege that today's major American composers are willing to write for us. To be sharing this experiment and experience in concert, to be a part of MusicNOW, is really something beautiful.

Chevelle has been rocking faces off crowds for over 10 years. The three piece is set to release its sixth studio album in December, Hats off to the Bull. Their most recent release, Sci-Fi Crimes, was a Top 10 album on the Billboard charts, fueled in part by the band's hit “Sleep Apnea.” CityBeat spoke with drummer Sam Loeffler before Chevelle's show in Cincinnati Friday with Bush and Filter at PNC Pavilion about the band's rise to fame, the current Occupy Wall Street protests, corporate greed and the importance of Wikipedia accuracy.

On
a closed off street in Northside, behind yesterday's Rock N’ Roll Carnival, band
members of Leggy distribute the last of their cigarettes evenly amongst each other.

The
three-piece “art-rock-influenced-punk-pop” band (download their EP Cavity Castle for free here and come up with your own
interpretation) consisting of Véronique Allaer on
guitar, Kirsten Bladh on bass and Chris Campbell on drums are fresh off
their residency at The Comet. Allaer writes the lyrics, and cites musicians
such as St. Vincent and Lana Del Ray as her influences. This is evident in the track “Sweet Teeth,” with its inherent sexy-yet-sassy,
tragic-yet-empowered lyricism. Allaer’s pouty voice
is one of the quintessential elements that make Leggy, well, Leggy. If Audrey Horne (from David Lynch’s Twin Peaks) ever
wanted to be a rock star, she would make a band like Leggy.

When
a band is given a Comet residency, they commit to playing once a week for a month,
and get to pick the other bands that play on their bill.

For
a DIY band, or for any aspiring musicians, a regular gig at a popular
music bar is a pretty big deal. So how does a band get a residency? For Leggy all
they had to do was drink enough alcohol.

“Do you know about Fogger Nights at Rake’s End?” Bladh asks. “We
got way too drunk. It was like 2:30 a.m. so we went over to the Ice Cream
Factory and drank with our friend who works at The Comet and eventually we were
like, ‘Hey, we should have a residency at The Comet,’ and he was like, ‘Totally.’”

A night of drinking might have
been the catalyst for the residency, but Leggy’s résumé speaks for itself.
They’re getting widespread attention internationally, and
playing with acts like Ghost Wolves and Paul Collins and even playing in The
Northside Rock N’ Roll carnival tonight.

With each success, it’s hard to find a new way to progress
forward, and — bar selling out Great American Ballpark — Leggy has accomplished a
lot in our little corner of Ohio. So now they are headed out into the world —
specifically, across the Midwest. Leggy’s next move is to go on tour and they say they’ll walk
the Midwest if they have to — and they might have to.

“The biggest issue is not booking shows, it’s figuring out how to
get there,” Allaer says. “A friend of ours was going to let us use his van, but
he hurt his back so now he needs it and none of us are 25.”

In case you forgot or don’t know, a person isn’t legally allowed
to rent a car until they are 25. Every member of Leggy is 24, and the tour
starts mid-August.

“We are trying to contact our 25-year-old friends,” Bladh says.

Regardless the transportation, Leggy is a band that treats
successes like stepping stones and ambition is more valuable than gasoline and
shitty vans. July 4th, coincidentally, is a day Allaer will always remember as
her wake up call for creating a successful band.

“Two
years ago today, I was wasted and fell off a three-story building and broke my
hip. I basically could have died, and it made me reevaluate my priorities,” she says.